It has been demonstrated statistically, that medication delivered in pill dispensers are two times less likely to be in error than delivered in free form1, thereby making pill dispensers a cost and health saving aspect in health management. (The Influence of Formulation and Medicine Delivery System on Medication Administration Errors in Care Homes for Older People. D P Alldred, C Standage, O Fletcher, I Savage, J Carpenter, N Barber, D K Raynor. BMJ Qual Saf 2011; bmjqs.2010.046318 Published Online First; 7 Feb. 2011). Also, there is a substantial array of health management software, intended to facilitate improved medication intake (compliance, adherence), which allows a caregiver or high needs patient to better manage their assortment of medications (e.g. medical scheduling, medication management, e-prescribing, etc).
There are a variety of devices made to improve compliance and adherence of medication. Currently, it is becoming more difficult for patients to coordinate an increasingly complex regimen of pills at the right times. Current systems are pill organizers, and carousel dispensers, and cartridge based dispensers, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/840,010 by N. Portney, filed Jul. 20, 2010, intended to help organize the release of pills.
Digital dispensers for syringe usage, U.S. Pat. No. 4,959,056, an automatic pill dispenser, U.S. Pat. No. 5,372,276, used to set pre-programmed supply for memory impaired patients, and an electronic pill reminder device, U.S. Pat. No. 6,545,592 used to timer to aid in timely medication usage are examples.
The current dispensing systems, while offering some degree of reminder, or digital assisted selection, are incapable of tracking the actual medication usage of each discrete tablet. For example, a pill reminder may be able to alert the patient, but has no way of reminding again if turned off. This iterative feedback is an important need to enable better compliance and adherence of medication usage, and is currently unavailable.
Thus, these systems have no way of determining how the patient is in fact taking the medication at the unit level or time basis Other pill devices which have built in reminders are sometimes capable of sending a message to a network to remind the patient to take their medication, but are primitive, because they lack patient feedback in the true time history of the medication dispensed. Furthermore, the prescribing physician in a healthcare setting has no way of digitally monitoring the true dispensing histories of their patients from the medical cabinets. Therefore, an iterative feedback loop is truly required in this industry, to successfully connect all of these components, through an intelligible system before compliance/adherence issues can be better controlled.
Key issues that inhibit development of such an optimal system include (a) control and recording of medication dispensing histories and accountability of each tablet designated to a patient, (b) providing the ability to feedback to the patient to take medication, (c) packaging the system in a practical portable system that patient for easy dispensing. The digital dispenser system in accordance with the present invention, has the capability to achieve all functions, and reduce the non-compliance cost in healthcare industry. The objective of the disclosure is the System, called D-Dispenser that improves the patient's compliance and adherence of any oral dosage formulation (tablet, filled capsule, softgel). This will also physicians to receive feedback of all of their patient medication dispensing histories, and allow them to monitor, analyze, and intervene for better compliance and adherence strategies for improved patient outcomes.